


Silent Running

by BlackjackKent



Series: Impenetrable [1]
Category: Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: Gen, Reapers, Refuse Ending, Technology, omega - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-05
Updated: 2017-08-05
Packaged: 2018-12-11 06:35:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,082
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11708844
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlackjackKent/pseuds/BlackjackKent
Summary: With Shepard's failure to stop the Reapers at the Battle of London, Aria and her team must decide how to protect Omega amid the death of the galaxy.





	Silent Running

**Author's Note:**

> This is my entry for the Mass Effect Big Bang 2017, hopefully the first in a series of fics about Aria T'Loak keeping control over Omega in the wake of the refusal ending of ME3. Hope you enjoy! Shoutout to turtleswerehere (http://turtleswerehere.tumblr.com) for being my artwork partner and AngelaKip (http://archiveofourown.org/users/AngelaKip) for being an awesome beta reader!

Garka had lived on Omega all his life. That was how he thought of it, at least. Perhaps he had actually been born elsewhere, but his earliest memories were all of the darkest corners of the Omega slums, of scrounging for food with a small pack of other batarian boys whose parents had been outcasts from Khar’shan. Varren pups, the shopkeepers called them. Animals hunting for scraps.

They’d lived a hard life, bitter and hungry and often cold with the everpresent leeching of heat out into the icy vacuum beyond the hull. It was life, but it was not much more than that.

Then Aria found them and everything changed.

Where there had once been nothing but cold and hunger, suddenly there was food and the blaring lights of the Afterlife nightclub, the thudding bass and alcohol burn and occasionally the company of the dancers, who looked at the gangly teenage street toughs with amusement. “Growing up fast, aren’t you, boy?” they would ask, flirtatious in that habitual, familiar way, and then they’d laugh as Garka’s upper eyes narrowed sheepishly and his leathery skin colored from grey-green to near-black.

And they were right. He _was_ growing up fast. Aria took good care of those she recruited from the slums. It was an impersonal sort of care, to be sure -- a product of cold practicality. But she fed and clothed and trained them, turned them from boys quick with their fists to men skilled with shotguns and pistols. She surrounded herself with those she had exalted from the gutter, and the effect was exactly as she had intended. They were loyal to her. They would kill for her. They would die for her.

There was nothing affectionate in the way Aria T’Loak mustered her troops. Survival was the only god she worshipped. And the only god her guards worshipped was her.

*****

“ _Garka! Make sure you’re right up on the corner of that right-hand corridor. I don’t want them getting out that exit. We’ll have them surrounded!”_

Garka listened as Bray snapped out the orders over the comm. “I’m already in position,” he answered mildly, raising one shoulder in a shrug.

Bray didn’t answer. Not that Garka had really expected a response. Bray was rarely one for casual banter; it was what made him a good leader. He had always been the one closest to Aria’s right hand, the one who absorbed her knack for commanding with the expectation of being obeyed. Some had resented him for that over the years -- generally the younger guards, new to the team and with fire in their bellies, eager for Aria’s approval. Not Garka. Garka had known Bray too long to resent him so long as the job got done.

In this case, the job was fairly simple. For some weeks now Aria’s guards had been working on cleansing the station of the remaining dregs of Oleg Petrovsky’s occupying force, those that Aria had not flattened on her juggernaut return. Aria’s orders had been clear: she demanded blood. Anyone with Cerberus ties who was still aboard the station was to be wiped out.

It had been a long, hard slog of a campaign, almost as much work as ousting Petrovsky in the first place. The Cerberus officers were tough, well-equipped, and desperate -- but ultimately no match for Aria’s teams, who were powered by fury and a loyalty so unshakeable as to resemble fanaticism. And the work had paid off; according to all the intelligence reports available, they had narrowed the remaining resistance to two soldiers and an engineer holed up in one of the observation lounges.

 _Two possible corridor exits and a ventilation duct. Easy._ Garka, standing at the end of one of those corridors, peered towards the lounge in question and leaned heavily against the bulkhead, absently checking the charge on his assault rifle.

It was a damn good thing that this was probably the last push they had to make. The guards were all in various stages of exhaustion by now, much more interested in being back at Afterlife sipping the last of the whiskey they’d cracked open the previous night. But Bray was relentless in his command. Aria wanted no survivors, and so they would press forward until there was nothing left.

_“What the fuck, anyway?” Moklan had asked irritably last night, his head resting against the shoulder of the dancer who’d cozied up to him. “What’s the rush? So we leave a few damn humans sitting out there a few days. We can afford the rest. What crawled up Bray’s ass and died?” But it was a rhetorical question, of course, because they all knew. They all protected Aria because it was their job and their debt and their duty, but Bray would sooner die than disappoint her._

Ultimately, though, it was all for the best, at least in Garka’s mind. The quicker they removed the last trace of Cerberus from the station, the quicker Aria would be at ease (to the extent that she ever was). But more importantly, the quicker things would return to normal on Omega. The quicker his family would be safe.

He could see the Cerberus officers through the cracked and dirty windows. One of the soldiers wore the bulky centurion armor; the other was a rank-and-file soldier who was hunched near the window with some sort of shoulder injury. The engineer stood near the middle of the room, halfway through setting up one of his turrets.

“ _Dhuk’tah,_ ” Moklan growled over the comm. “ _Like three flies all together on a piece of shit. Let’s swat them already and go home._ ”

Bray ignored this deliberately. “ _Narl, have you got eyes-on?_ ”

“ _I’ve got them!_ ” Narl was young, a more recent recruit off the Omega streets, and his voice sounded strained and tired. The hard pace of this housecleaning campaign was wearing on all of them, but the young guards most of all. Garka felt a flash of sympathy for the boy, cramped with his sniper rifle inside the atmo ducting in the top of the lounge -- and some amusement for the determined energy which Narl brought to the mission in spite of his exhaustion. “ _Do I shoot?_ ”

“ _Hold,_ ” Bray said in his clipped growl. “ _Ahz, get hacking; I want that engineer’s turret to blow up in his face at the same time Narl shoots for the centurion. Everyone else -- keep watching the exit paths. Clean up if they try to make a run for it._ ”

There was a mumbled curse from Ahz over their headsets; followed by a vague mutter about _new encryption protocols_. Garka resisted the urge to grin. The salarian tech always complained, but he always got the job done, too, usually in record time.

Bray knew it, too, and didn’t need to wait for an acknowledgment. “ _And that should cover us. On my mark._ ”

Garka straightened from the bulkhead, sighted down along the corridor, ready for any sign of movement.

“ _Fire._ ”

The bulkheads rattled with a tremendous bang as Ahz’s quick work overloaded the Cerberus engineer’s mobile turret. Within moments, Garka could see the flicker of flame catching on the upholstery of the lounge, followed by screams, a muted gurgling through the glass of the windows. Narl’s rifle went off in a sound like the whisper of wind, and there was a heavy thunk as the centurion hit the floor.

Almost at the same time, the lounge door exploded open, and for a split second Garka came face to face with the remaining Cerberus trooper. His helmet was shattered and he was clutching his shoulder. Beneath the broken glass, Garka could see glowing blue eyes and an expression of fear and terror and an animal fury that he had never before seen on a human face.

He fired and there was a splash of bright red blood; the soldier fell to the decking and lay still.

Silence.

The whole business had taken perhaps fifteen seconds, all told. _And why not?_ Garka thought with acerbic humor, holstering his rifle. _We’re professionals._

“Three in, three down,” he informed Bray briskly, leaning over and rolling over the soldier’s body carefully. “Very clean. That should be two sets of intact armor to strip for parts, plus whatever’s left of the engineer. Do you want me to --”

“ _All squads! Attention!_ ”

Garka blinked and fell silent at once. That was Aria’s voice. And not the coolly calm, authoritative tone they were used to, either. Most on Omega would not have recognized it, but Garka knew, and no doubt Bray did as well, that something was wrong.

“ _Drop what you’re doing! Return to the auxiliary control center immediately._ ”

Garka frowned. _Damn_. Two sets of armor would make for a lot of useful repairs, but it didn’t even enter his head to disobey. When Aria said to move, you moved.

He let the body in his hands fall with a thump to the decking as he stood up.

*****

The auxiliary control center was a relatively new concept in Omega history. Originally it had been nothing more than a backup access point for engineering work on stationwide systems, as well as a docking station for people in Aria’s employ not using the main shipping lanes. That had been before Cerberus, of course.

When Oleg Petrovsky’s grip closed around the station and Aria was ousted from power, Cargo Access D abruptly became critical to the course of history in the Terminus Systems. It was, after all, one of the few places on Omega that had a hangar and dock for ship arrivals, and its systems were deliberately isolated from the station’s main power flow -- the idea being that a stationwide repair might very well come on the heels of catastrophic power or life support failure.

It had become the launching area for Aria’s juggernaut plan to retake the station from Petrovsky. The general’s body was of course now floating somewhere in the debris field beyond the hull, the life choked out of him, but the auxiliary control center had retained its importance during the cleanup effort. Important meetings and planning sessions were held there, and it underwent regular security sweeps.

It was, in short, self-contained and impenetrable, and thus one of the only places Aria felt comparatively safe these days.

Most of her staff had noticed the difference. In the wake of the Cerberus invasion she had grown tenser and more paranoid, more withdrawn, aware of the possibility of threat in every corner. _My hand is on the controls once more,_ she had reminded the populace when she retook control, _and I will not let go again._

And she had suited the action to the word, her rule becoming more careful and secluded, her guard stepped up to double shifts. She was acutely aware of what remained of Petrovsky’s presence hanging around her ‘throne’ overlooking Afterlife. These days she occupied the ACC more frequently, with a constant watch on the security feeds, and felt at least somewhat at ease.

Today, though, even that was denied to her.

“What’s their ETA?” she asked Ahz grimly, staring out the control center window at the docking bay beyond.

“About fifteen minutes. Maybe longer, depending on how long it takes them to dock,” Ahz answered at once, his fingers flying over the console. “Given the damage, their docking systems might be inoperable.”

Heavy booted feet sounded behind her and she turned, seeing her kill squads returning. Bray stood at their head, all of his eyes narrowed in puzzled concern. “What happened?” he asked.

She didn’t like that it had been so easy for him -- for anyone -- to tell something was wrong, and her eyes blazed as she scowled. “Jarral’s fleet is returning from Earth.”

Bray’s expression remained customarily stoic, but Garka, at his elbow, frowned tightly. The RUM raiding fleet, Aria’s contribution to the multi-species last-ditch force against the Reapers, had only departed three days earlier. “That was fast.”

“Too fast,” she agreed. “I don’t like it. Either Shepard pulled a miracle out of her hat, or…” She didn’t have to say it. They all knew what it meant if that fleet had failed to retake the human homeworld.

“Have they communicated?” Bray grunted.

“No messages. Looks like most of them are running on emergency power. No comms,” Ahz answered crisply. Aria knew he was worried too; Jarral, the RUM commander, was one of his best friends. But one of the benefits of salarian employees (particularly technically inclined ones) was that they didn’t let emotions get in the way of doing their jobs. Aria was of the private opinion that they’d be better off if her whole organization was of a similar mind.

“Bring them in,” she ordered. “Do whatever you need to get them docked. And tell Jarral I want to see her as soon as the ships are secure.”

Ahz nodded. “Understood.”

*****

In the end, Jarral didn’t come to Aria. Aria had to come to her.

“How is she?”

“Stable.” The medic, a tired-looking turian with a harsh scar along one mandible, looked up at Omega’s queen with worry in his eyes. “I can’t say the same for all of her crew.”

Long years of practice kept Aria’s expression unreadable. “What was the casualty rate?”

He sighed. No one liked giving Aria bad news, and this...well, it was the worst kind. “Fifty percent DOA. A few of the others will probably live but we’ve got three paralyzed. One permanently disfigured. Several missing limbs. And that’s just on her ship.”

Bray, as always, was at Aria’s side, and he grunted hoarsely, an imitation of Aria’s unflappable coolness. The facade was not quite as impenetrable in his case; his fingers fidgeted behind his back. “It was that bad?”

“Reports say one of their thruster assemblies detonated.”

Bray said nothing, but his eyes all narrowed again. Aria allowed herself a frown. “I want to talk to her. Now.”

The medic nodded and turned on his heel, leading her back through the beds of wounded mercs that had been unloaded from the damaged RUM ships. Some of them saw Aria and stirred to watch her or offer weak salutes. Others just stared at the ceiling; either they could not see her or didn’t care to acknowledge her.

Aria felt tightness grip her chest. _I won’t lose control now. Not after everything._ She came to a halt at the back of the room where one of the beds was set apart from the others, and for a moment she just looked at the leader of her raiding fleet.

All things considered, Jarral could have looked worse. The right side of her face was horribly burned and there was a desolate, deadpan expression in eyes that Alliance intel (Aria was told) had once described as “cheerfully ruthless.” But she was conscious, alert, and had all limbs accounted for, which was more than many further up the room could say.

“Aria,” she said. Flat but respectful. Not much like herself at all. There was a definite slur to the tone, but Aria judged it came more from exhaustion than damage or pain.

“Jarral. What happened?”

“Exactly what it looks like.” Jarral shrugged, then winced at the movement. Her gaze drifted a little behind Aria’s right shoulder. “There were so many of them. Too many. We...couldn’t hold out…”

Aria didn’t like that blank expression. It spoke of despair. She wanted to reach out and shake the other woman, snap vigor and life back into her eyes. _This is Omega. We don’t succumb. We don’t give in._ “Tell me everything. Details.”

The picture Jarral painted was crisp and bleak. “Everything was going to according to plan at first. The ground teams went in -- the Alliance called them the hammer. We were the sword.” She smiled bitterly at the unnecessary poetry. “They wanted us flying skirmish routes around the Crucible, holding it long enough for the ground teams to get aboard the Citadel and open her up. Seemed simple enough. We’ve fought plenty of Reaper ships by now; we knew we could hold out a while.”

She shivered suddenly, a full-body shiver so fierce that Aria could _see_ it rock through her. “Just until Shepard hit the Citadel, they said,” she went on, her voice and gaze distant. “Just until Shepard could get there. Only Shepard didn’t get there…”

Aria frowned and crossed her arms over her chest. _Shepard._ She’d gotten to know Shepard all too well during the assault against Petrovsky’s occupation; the woman’s solidity and sense of purpose almost matched her own. “What do you mean? She’s dead?”

“We don’t know.” Jarral shook her head slightly. “The last we heard, she and that Alliance admiral who was running the ground game were making a run for the Citadel’s transit beam. Some of the Reaper ships broke off to intercept them...and then that was it. Nothing. No word. Around that same time, Grizz’s ship went up in flames and they caught us amidships, blew out our thrusters.” She lifted a hand, rubbed absently at the burn scarring now creasing her cheek. “I knew we wouldn’t live to make another plan if we stayed. As it is, we barely made it out with half what we started with.”

Aria’s jaw worked; she turned her head to look out the window at the remains of the ships she had sent, husks of their former selves, the dead still being carted out of them. “And the rest of the allied fleets?”

Jarral shook her head again. “They were all burning,” was all she said. “And the Crucible didn’t work.”

Aria turned on her heel and walked out into the corridor without another word. Bray stood stock-still a moment longer, then followed her at a jog.

Jarral’s head flopped back on the pillow and she looked at the ceiling, eyes blank and weary. A few minutes passed before another set of footsteps approached her.

“Hey, Ahz.”

“Hey.” The salarian tech tried to smile, though it looked weak and forced. “Thought I’d see how you were doing.”

“Not good.” Jarral tipped her head slightly, glancing at the door. “You just missed Aria.”

“How’d she take it?”

“Badly. What do you expect? We’re doomed here. They’ll reach us sooner or later and that’ll be it.” Jarral’s eyes closed, so she couldn’t see Ahz shake his head.

“I don’t believe that. Aria’s still got some tricks up her sleeve, I bet. She’ll come up with something,” he told her earnestly.

Jarral smiled humorlessly. “I wish I thought you were right. You didn’t see them, Ahz. They carved through us like we were nothing. Everything was just...fire and death. I heard Grizz screaming over the comm…” A pause. “You don’t know what they’re capable of.”

Ahz shrugged. “I may not have fought them in person,” he agreed. “But I know Aria. I know that she won’t give up without a fight.”

“Maybe.”

*****

Aria was taller than Bray by a good three inches. Her longer-legged strides left him jogging to keep up as she left the ACC medical bay. He considered asking her what she was thinking, what she planned to do, but a quick look at her face told him he shouldn’t. He hadn’t gotten to be her right-hand man by prying where he wasn’t wanted.

So he remained silent and wary, glaring off the occasional underling as they tried to approach. And he followed her, though he grew less and less certain of where they were going. Her path seemed aimless, random.

First she went to Afterlife and stalked around it like an animal marking her territory. Patrons tried to call out to her, but she ignored them, her gaze seeming to take in the whole room at once, possessive, attentive.

The nightclub was busy as ever, the civilians of the station doing their best to ignore the threat beyond their hull, to drown it out with music and drink. Whatever had happened during the battle for Earth, the news hadn’t reached these people yet. He said as much to Aria, and she grunted as if he’d affirmed something she was already thinking. “There’ll be riots when the word gets out,” she said tersely, her lips pulled to a sharp line. “As if it’d do any good. Maybe they’re right, and this really is all we can do now -- break out the hard liquor and drink till we don’t care anymore.”

Bray didn’t say anything. He was never one for idle conversation, which was probably why Aria kept him at her side. He had learned fast as one of those street boys, years ago, and had particularly taken to heart the fact that when Aria wanted an answer, she asked a direct question. When she didn’t, it was wise not to pretend that she had.

After a while in the deep-bass thud and humidity, his silence paid off.

“I don’t believe that’s true,” she said. Her tone suggested she was putting the last word to an argument she’d been having with herself for some minutes. “Come on.”

He followed her back out of the club again and down to a lower deck, a seedy corner of the market district where the black markets operated quietly. Some of the merchants looked curiously at Aria and asked Bray what he wanted to buy; others ignored the new arrivals entirely, focused on whatever deal they were currently cutting.

“This is the real Omega,” Aria said. This time she sounded more thoughtful, almost affectionate. “Not the clubs. Not the slums. Not even --” Whatever she was about to say, she stopped herself on the edge of it and swallowed the words back. “ _This,_ ” she repeated instead, absently grinding one fist into the opposite palm. “The galaxy tries to grind us down and we stand up and say no. We say we’ll live to spit in their faces, that we’ll survive. And we do.”

Another long pause. Bray waited again, patient and silent and as earnestly intent as a batarian could look. Again he wasn’t disappointed.

“And we will,” she added with a sense of dark finality, and dropped her arms back to her sides.

They ordered three crates of heavy explosives and four of electrical components and eezo-based power generators before moving on.

Their final stop was a deep cave of a room, the housing chamber for Omega’s main power generator. Bray had to squint hard to be able to make out anything in the place at all; it was a dark, humid area with a high, echoing ceiling and walls lined with observation stations. The generator hummed at the center, a tall mushroom-shaped dome of lights and metal and latticed wiring.

“And there’s the heart,” Aria said distantly. She took a few steps forward, pressed her palm to the casing of the generator, sucked in a breath with pain at the heat of the metal but did not pull away. In the dim red emergency lighting she appeared briefly to Bray as if she were wreathed in flame.

Again he waited. This time, when she spoke, it was to him directly.

“Why did you come back with me to retake Omega?” she asked him, and her voice had a harsh hoarseness to it, rasping with intensity.

He didn’t have to think about it. “Because you asked,” he said simply.

A pause. “Go on.”

“You’re the queen. I go where you go.”

She nodded slightly, seeming to come to some sort of decision with herself. “Do you trust the others?”

He looked somewhat surprised. Trust wasn’t a commodity on Omega; she had taught him that herself on the first day out of the slums. Teamwork, yes. Cooperation. Even a sort of camaraderie at times, when the lights were low in Afterlife and the customers had slowed to a trickle. But trust? “What do you mean?”

She returned her gaze to the hot metal in front of her. “There’s a storm coming,” she said. “We’re not going to be able to afford any loose ends.”

He smiled, a tight, feral grin. “We never do.” He wasn’t sure what answer she was looking for, or what had sparked the question. Even in the darkest days in Purgatory, waiting to launch the assault fleet, he had never seen her look this flatly serious. “You want to know if they’ll keep following you?” he asked, with his customary curtness. “They don’t know how to do anything else.”

She seemed to consider this for a while. “Damn right,” she said abruptly, and let her hand drop back to her side. Her eyes flared steel-blue in the dimness as she turned to face him. “I’m not letting them win,” she told him, matter-of-fact and hard. “We are not losing this place again -- not now, not ever.”

*****

Guard shifts had been quietly doubled up at key points in the station, so there was little chance for anyone to go home. Garka debated sleeping on a cot in the ACC for the evening; he’d done it before more than once, after all. But in the end he clocked off his shift, climbed out of his armor, threw on a battered jacket and left the control center, heading for the slums.

No one knew exactly what Jarral had told Aria, or exactly what had happened on the ships that had come back so battered and broken. That conversation had been private; if Ahz and Bray, who had been present, knew what was said, they weren’t talking. But really, it wasn’t hard to guess. Something bad had happened on Earth. If the Reapers had been destroyed, the news would be spreading by now; the very containment of that news gave a clue as to its nature.

And yet without news, there could be no orders, and without orders there would be no action, no change. So Garka did the only thing he could think to do under the circumstances -- he went home to have time with his family and pretended everything was normal.

“ _Gark-ut_?”

“Yes, it’s me.” He smiled tiredly at the nickname, stepping in the door of the small apartment. “Sorry I’m late. Shifts are doubled.”

“We heard.” Marin emerged from the back kitchen, heralded by a smell of slightly burnt ration packs and trailed by their two boys. Davet and Peyter both immediately ran to their father, hugging him around his legs. Garka squatted down and put an arm around one, then the other.

“You’re getting big, boys.” He watched them squirm with their endless energy as he released them from the hug, and he reflected absently (and not for the first time) that he was one of the few among Aria’s teams to have found any sort of life outside her service. Aria preferred it that way; some bought into it wholeheartedly, like Bray, and some more resentfully, like Moklan, but one way or another everyone marched to the beat of her drum. She _was_ Omega, as she liked to say, and the fact that Garka had found this extra sweetness to life was a crack in that absolute wall around her, something that set him apart from the other members of the team.

When he had first met Marin and began to think of the future, he had worried that Aria would crack down on it, make life difficult for both of them. Surprisingly enough, Aria had never actually seen fit to interfere. She never asked about Garka’s family or gave him any slack in his duties in order to have time with them, but she never actively kept them apart, either, and he was grateful for that.

And she had never come for his sons. He was even more grateful for that. Aria’s forces were full of batarians she’d trained from before they were old enough to think for themselves. Garka had been one of them himself. And what he did for her was out of loyalty, yes, but also because he wanted Omega to be secure enough one day that she wouldn’t need to take his boys too.

_Maybe all for nothing, now…_

“They were saying troubling things in the market,” Marin said, as if she was reading his mind. She leaned against the wall, watching him, her expression carefully neutral so as not to frighten the children. “Jarral’s fleet came back?”

“Yes,” he answered evenly. He knew she wanted him to tell her that the rumors weren't true, that everything had turned out fine and it was going to be all right. But he didn’t know how. He hadn’t even talked to Jarral himself yet, but he’d seen the ships drifting powerless into the ACC dock. He knew things had not turned out fine.

“And?”

“A bit cut up,” was all he said. He gave the boys a gentle squeeze, then nudged them. “You left your game running in the other room.”

Davet groaned dramatically and trotted off, his little brother trailing behind.

Garka waited until they’d left the room and the door had shut behind them before he went on. “Things didn’t go as planned. There’s going to be trouble,” he admitted quietly. His gaze lifted to hers from where he still kneeled on the decking. He could see the fear ripple across all four of her eyes.

“Should we leave? Maybe there’s somewhere we can go…”

He shook his head, leaning back on his heels. “The Reapers are going everywhere. What’s the point in leaving?” A pause. “Besides, Aria wouldn’t let us.”

Her jaw worked fiercely. “Are you telling me you wouldn’t stand up to her if it meant protecting our kids?”

“I’m not saying that,” he said defensively. “I’m saying that there’s no point in rocking the boat if it won’t net us anything.” He shook his head again and stood up, rubbing one hand absently against the other arm. “I won’t let anyone come between me and doing what’s right for you,” he went on quietly after a short pause. “I just...don’t know what that is, right now.”

Her expression softened. After a moment she stepped away from the wall, slipped her arms around him and leaned her head against his shoulder. “That wasn’t fair of me,” she muttered gruffly. “You’ve done everything you can to take care of us, to make Omega home.”

“I learned that from her too,” he said with a quiet sigh. “In her fucked-up way.” He resisted the urge to lift his head, to check no one was listening. There was always that vague sense on Omega that people were paying attention to everything you said, even if you weren’t paying attention yourself. But right now, he didn’t really care.

Besides, he suspected Aria might agree, at least privately.

“I’ll need to be back early in the morning,” he murmured. “I...don’t really know what’s going to happen. Keep your omnitool close by; I’ll tell you what develops.”

“Be careful, Garka.”

“I always am.” His lips curled in a slight grin. “It’s why I don’t get promoted anymore.” He gave her a gentle squeeze against him. “It’ll be all right.” He didn’t entirely believe it, and neither did she by the look in her eyes -- but there wasn’t anything else to say.

*****

Aria stood in the observation deck and stared out at the starscape as if it was responsible for all of her problems.

Somewhere out there in the blackness, the Reapers were coming. There was no question of that now. Shepard had failed, and Shepard was the only person Aria had remotely trusted to be capable of the task (after the fashion in which Aria could trust anyone, of course). With Shepard lost, there would be nothing. The galaxy would fall.

She scowled at her reflection in the shield-reinforced glass. _This is not how it is supposed to be. This is not how I am supposed to end._ Privately, she supposed she had unconsciously rejected the idea of her own death, that she had always somehow assumed she would go on forever, that after everything else she had managed to overcome in her life, there was nothing left to stop her.

Nonsense, of course. One of her matras had always been _everyone wants something._ But in the end no matter what you wanted you always ended up in the same place.

_But I won’t give up without a fight._

That thought came blunt and hard on the heels of the others, and she didn’t question it. There might be no escaping the fate that lay in store for them, but she would fight to her last breath even if the rest of the galaxy burned around her.

 _I will make Omega impenetrable,_ she had told her ‘subjects’ after releasing her fingers from Petrovsky’s lifeless throat. _No one, nothing, will ever threaten my domain again._ Most aboard the station had accepted this without question. Aria’s rule had been the way of things for long enough that it did not surprise them. Most of them likely didn’t realize where that determined grip came from; she doubted any of them cared.

But she knew exactly why she held on so tightly to this place. Omega was the first thing that had ever been _hers_ and no one else’s. A childhood of a hundred years on the streets of Thessia with a name she didn’t even remember had been followed by a few more centuries crammed into the corner of a commando barracks, mocked for lack of heredity and passed over for promotion because capability meant nothing compared to connections. But she’d learned, and she’d grown strong, and she’d left and become a merc, freelance, always on the move with nothing more than the armor she wore and the occasional scrounged scrap of food -- like being on the street again, but with more gunfire.

But Omega...she had come to Omega and seen what it could be and _taken_ it for her own. And when it had been taken away again, it felt like her heart was ripped out of her chest. They called it hyperbole when she said _I am Omega,_ but they didn’t understand that she meant it literally. She had spent much of her life surviving and destroying; Omega and Liselle were the only things she had ever created. And Liselle was dead. Omega was all that was left.

_I won’t give up without a fight. They won’t take it from me again._

She flicked her wrist sharply, lifting her omnitool into speaking range. “Bray, I want Ahz up here on the double.”

Ahz came at a trot within five minutes, breathing hard and rubbing at a grease mark on one horn. “Aria,” he said respectfully, halting inside the doors of the lounge. “I was working on fixing the environmental controls on Afterlife’s lower deck. Barfight threw someone into the panel again. I think we --”

“Never mind about that.” She was still looking out the window, and cut him off without looking back. “I want to know what it would take to make this station invisible.”

Dead silence. She waited. The silence stretched. “Ahz, I asked you a question.”

“I -- I’m not sure what you mean,” he said carefully. She could hear the effort it took him to keep from stammering.

“I want to turn us into a hole in space. Invisible. If the Reapers pass us, I want them to never know we were even here.”

“That’s…” He rubbed at his horn again. “That’s quite a big ask. A station of this size...we’d have to cut all power flow to the outer hull, communications blackout, dock lockdown… The manpower required would be --”

She turned finally, faced him head-on, and he went utterly still. There were superstitions whispered in some back corners of the Omega slums that Aria had not killed Petrovsky by hand -- that she had just looked at him and it had been enough to stop his heart. Ahz, for his part, was a realist, a technician who didn’t have time for exaggerated stories; generally he ignored such over-the-top mutterings. But looking at her now, he could see how someone might believe that the fire in her eyes could kill. He felt like he was in the sights of a mining laser that could carve him up for the wrong answer.

“Can you do it, Ahz? You’ll have the resources.”

He paused, then nodded. “Yes. I can do it. But...do you really think the Reapers will fall for something like that? After everything that’s happened…”

Her expression didn’t shift; if anything it seemed to harden further. “We’ll die if we don’t. And that’s not acceptable.”

“And if we live?” He swallowed.

“Are you questioning me, Ahz?”

“No -- no,” he said hastily. Normally, for anyone raised in Aria’s service, the order was enough; when she said something was to be done, you did it and that was that. But he couldn’t help thinking about Jarral, the half-healed scars across her face where she lay in the ACC medical bay. And (less organic, but equally vital in his eyes) the battered and scarred hulls of the ships that fought at Earth, the marks where Reaper lasers tore through them like tissue paper.

He remembered the despair in Jarral’s eyes at the idea of the enemy she’d faced.

“I just...wonder if we stand a chance,” he admitted. “Or what the point is if everyone else in the galaxy would be dead.”

She reflected wryly that he was probably one of the few that could ask these questions of her in safety. She had no shortage of guards, but in the short time he’d been alive, Ahz had practically built Omega’s current security systems from scratch. She couldn’t afford to lose him, especially not now, at this critical juncture. So he could make these demands for explanations...and she deigned to answer him.

“If we survive, we win,” she said simply. She could see him frown doubtfully, but she ignored the expression. “This station is the center of the Terminus. This corner of the galaxy has tried over and over to destroy us and we have never let it.” Her voice took on an odd timber, as if she were speaking to a crowd, though he was the only one in the room. “You don’t _fuck_ with Omega, Ahz. No one does.”

“Not even the Reapers,” he said. It was an agreement, although a grudging one. _I’ll be dead in fifteen years anyway,_ he reflected sardonically. _One way or another._ Being a salarian in the galactic community was odd, that way. The lives of other species dragged on while he raced forward, hurtling through time at twice the speed. Ironic that he was now being given the option to decide for all the rest what their lives would look like, long after he died.

“And when the Reapers leave?” he asked carefully. “What will we do then?”

 _I don’t care,_ she almost snapped, a ricochet release of that tension drawn tight inside her. _I don’t care what happens after.The point is that they won’t have us, they won’t win. They won’t take it from me._ Perhaps he could see that flare of emotion, the fire rising even higher in her eyes, for his stillness deepened even to halting his breathing.

But she didn’t lash out, didn’t attack him. She waited, held the moment until it eased, then met his eyes coolly. “Will you do the job, Ahz? Or will I have to ask someone else?”

He relaxed, too relieved to hear her calmness to push the question any further. “It’ll be done.”

“Good.” She hooked her arms behind her back, turned away from him to stare out at the starscape again. “What do we need?”

“It’d be easiest to do everything through the main generator,” he said tersely. His speech began to increase in rapidity as he turned from the emotional question to the much easier technical one. “From there we can cut power to the docks, communication arrays and outer hull casing. We’ll want to line the hull against electromagnetic transmission. Supplies --”

“I’ll worry about supplies,” she answered curtly. “I have Moklan working on converting unused storage space to hydroponics development.”

“It’s a lot of people…”

“Fewer since Cerberus.” She almost spat the words. “And we have a lot of unused storage space.” Her fingers flexed restlessly behind her back. “We don’t have a lot of time. This needs to be done, and it needs to be done fast. And I want it prototyped into a shuttle first. You and I will test your handiwork against the reapers before we risk the station with it.”

He swallowed, the orange tint of his skin paling somewhat. “Um. Right.” He rubbed a hand at the opposite shoulder and sighed. “When -- when do you want me to get started?”

“Yesterday. But right now will have to do. Move.”

*****

“We’re going to do what?”

Garka stared at Aria, all four eyes wide with bewilderment. She looked back coolly and folded her arms across her chest.

“Watch your tone with me, Garka,” she said flatly. “I wasn’t asking for opinions.”

“We’re going to shut the whole station down?” Garka forced his tone to equanimity, practicality. One didn’t _question_ Aria’s decisions, and yet -- “How?”

“Ahz has a plan,” Bray growled from where he stood at the left arm of Aria’s couch. “He thinks he can mask our electromagnetic signature. Long as no one leaves or sends a message out…”

“We’ll survive,” Aria finished curtly. “That’s what’s important here.”

Garka shook his head, ignoring his fellow guard in favor of keeping his eyes on Aria. “I wasn’t asking about the tech.” Hell if he’d understand the answer anyway; he was a bodyguard and that was all Aria needed him to be. They were talking about technological magic on a scale never before attempted, the scale of desperation and wild chances. But Ahz had worked miracles before. Garka’s concerns were elsewhere, clenching around his heart.

“What, then?”

A long silence. Garka considered his options. He didn’t _have_ to speak up. In fact, in the short term, it would absolutely be safer not to. And no matter what he said, Aria would do as she pleased anyway; she always did. He’d long since learned that his role was to obey, not to advise, not to question. But he had learned that lesson before Marin, before his sons.

 _Are you saying you wouldn’t stand up to her if it meant protecting our boys?_ He had to say something.

“You’re talking about cutting everyone aboard this station off from the outside world, without their consent.”

Her lips pursed. “I’m talking about saving their lives. Or do you think they’d rather all get turned into Reapers?”

“I think they’d rather have a choice in the matter. I think they’d rather close the door than have it slammed on them.”

“Even your family?” The question was pointed and cold. “If we can prove Ahz’s plan works, if we can implement it on this station, it will keep your family alive. Keep that in mind, Garka.”

“That’s not what I --” Anger sputtered uncomfortably in his chest. For six years she had never mentioned them, but now that she could use them to manipulate him… “I’m not saying not to survive. But we’re doing it wrong. There’ll be trouble if we do it this way. People hurt. All I’m trying to say is --”

Bray’s head lifted slightly and his eyes narrowed. “Watch yourself, Garka,” he growled curtly. “We have our orders.”

That rankled. _Do you really think I’m just talking back because I’m getting too big for my armor? You’ve known me thirty years; have I ever --_ “You’d say that even if she told you to light yourself on fire,” he said moodily before he could stop himself.

Bray scowled defensively. “This has to be done,” he snapped back.

“We _have_ to clamp down like they’re all under arrest?” Garka shook his head bitterly; his eyes flicked from Bray to Aria and met her gaze squarely. “You love this station. We all know that. But you have _no_ idea who the people _are_ here. How they work.”

“And you do?” Bray glared at him.

Garka shrugged. “I know enough. I know more than you. I actually go down to the slums. And I was stuck here, trapped, when Cerberus took the place, while you two were both on the Citadel. I saw what they did. I know if you take their freedom just because you can, they’ll fight. They’ll riot. They did it with Cerberus and they’ll do it with you.”

Aria’s jaw tightened. “They know better. They know this is my station. My world.”

Garka looked at her steadily. “Are you willing to bet their lives on that?”

“Yes.” The answer was swift, cold. He could see her knuckles white as her fingers clenched into fists. “The question is whether you’re going to do as you’re told.”

He knew there was no arguing with her in this mood. But he remained silent for a few seconds instead, watching her expression. He had known her a long time, worked for her most of his life. He knew her ferocity when it came to the station, to protecting it at all costs. But there was something different about that furious grip today, something he couldn’t put his finger on.

Habit overcame everything else in the end, and his eyes dropped. “Whatever you need,” he muttered hoarsely.

She stared at him intently.The silence stretched. “You’re dismissed, Garka.”

She waited until he had left, and let Bray shift awkwardly foot-to-foot in tense silence a moment or two. “They don’t know how to do anything else, hmm?”

He shrugged, not meeting her eyes. “I’ll get him in line.”

“Do that.”

*****

After that, Aria didn’t tell most of her guards about what was planned. Not that she believed Garka, not that he had the right to undermine her authority -- but she didn’t want to risk further dissent till the plan was in place.

It had nothing to do with nerves. She didn’t let nerves get the better of her. It had to do with maintaining control.

She was sure, of course, that the populace was starting to be aware that something was in the offing. Ahz and a small group of (comparatively) trusted technicians were locked up in one of the ACC labs day and night, but in the meantime she had Bray orchestrating a section-by-section evacuation of the outer ring of the station, clearing out any contact with the hull. There had been resistance, but Aria’s guards were firm. It was necessary...but no one knew why.

“It’s brilliant,” Ahz told her when she asked him about his progress, the last day before everything began. His normally smooth tones were underlaid with the excitement of unraveling a problem. “We’re going to make use of the eezo stockpiles. We can replicate a biotic barrier using the power transmission vectors through the hull; it’ll seem like normal eezo degradation from the abandoned mines to any passing scanners, and will also kill any outgoing electromagnetic signals.”

She nodded coolly at him. “When will it be ready to test?”

“We, um...we did load up a shuttle with the necessary equipment, but I wasn’t sure if you were serious about --”

She rolled her eyes. “Ahz, have I _ever_ given you an order I wasn’t serious about?”

A pause. “No,” he muttered tiredly. “We can launch when you’re ready.”

Three people seemed a light crew for the small cargo freighter Ahz had outfitted, but she didn’t want to commit more than herself, Bray, and Ahz to the experiment. She needed to be sure matters stayed secure. It was just as well, anyway, as the rear compartment of the freighter was nearly filled with a portable generator assembly designed to mimic the one that powered Omega; this left the three of them crammed into the cockpit area, Aria and Bray shoulder to shoulder behind the pilot’s seat.

Aria glanced over her shoulder and eyed the generator warily as the shuttle hummed to life. It occurred to her abruptly that she could very well die today, if Ahz had not carried out his side of the plan effectively. It wasn’t like her to throw herself into the cannon’s mouth like this, and she couldn’t much say she liked it. But there was no choice. Either they tested it today and died, or it remained untested and failed for the whole station; the result would be the same. At least this way, Omega would endure a little longer if Ahz got them killed.

_But he won’t. And I’m not going to die. And they are not going to win._

They maneuvered the freighter out of the asteroid field surrounding the station. Ahz had cut the power to most of the non-essential systems, including the lights, and there were moments when they were nothing but three sets of eyes in the dimness as they made the leap through the mass relay. It’d be utterly impractical for a battle, if it came to that. Everything depended on whether they could be silent.

It sat poorly with Aria, who had spent centuries ensuring that no one could avoid knowing of her existence, her power. But it was better than death.

They emerged from the mass relay near Thessia. There were no Reapers immediately nearby, but Ahz noted on the passive sensor array that, almost at once, some of them broke off from the asari homeworld, as if they were monitoring the relay for activity.

Aria peered past Ahz’s shoulder out the front viewport, a muscle working in her cheek. “How do we stand?”

“All systems connecting to the external hull are powered down,” he said. Of course it didn’t matter if they spoke aloud or not, and yet they were both whispering instinctively. His voice was quiet enough to almost mix with the muted hum of the generator at their backs. “Internal non-essentials too. The damping field is running at full capacity. Electromagnetic dispersal is at zero.”

Bray grunted. “How soon before we know if they can see us?”

Ahz shrugged. “Alliance intel records said their maximum aerial assault range is five hundred thousand kilometers. If we aren’t pulverized at four hundred…”

Bray huffed a breath out through his nose. “Terrific,” he muttered.

Silence again. They watched as the enormous ships began to draw closer. Aria’s eyes tracked them, fascinated. The things were ravaging the galaxy, but she’d never actually seen one up close, and now they were drawing even with her in a standoff. She would win or she would die, but either way she would look them in the face…

The sight of them made a shiver of unwelcome fear trickle down her back. Living on Omega, one saw the darkest side of the galaxy and learned not to shrink from it, but she had rarely seen anything in nearly a millennium of life that felt so overtly wrong as those things floating outside. At first they were merely slightly blacker shapes against the black of the starscape; as they drew nearer the relay, they began to take on form, a hulking mass drifting out of the darkness and growing more impossibly huge by the moment.

 _If they_ do _notice us, pulverized will be putting it mildly._

“Range?”

“Six hundred thousand kilometers.”

Bray stirred again. “They’re going to run into us.”

Ahz shook his head. “No, they’re not,” he said uneasily. “If they stay on their present course, they’ll clear us by…” He checked his console, then gulped audibly. “500 meters.”

“So...double the width of Afterlife? Our shield radius is wider than --”

“We don’t have the shields up, remember?”

“I remember,” Bray growled.

Another short silence. “Five hundred thousand kilometers,” Ahz muttered. “We’re within their firing range.”

They waited with bated breath. The silence in the cockpit was absolute. The Reapers drew closer...closer… Aria could see the pale red glow of a firing chamber in the front of the carapace of each one, but no flame of an ignition.

“Four hundred thousand kilometers. They can’t see us,” Ahz said. His voice was shaking.

“If they run into us, it won’t matter,” Bray noted sourly. “Can we move ventral?”

“Not without giving our position away. Three hundred thousand kilometers. If they detect power output they’ll lock onto us in under a second. Quiet is all we have going for us. That’s why we’re out here,” Ahz pointed out, more than a little acerbically.

Bray swore under his breath.

“Two hundred thousand kilometers,” Ahz noted.

Aria’s fingers dug into the back of Ahz’s chair. The ships were overwhelmingly large now, bearing down on them, the whole viewscreen taken up by the hulking shape of elongated metal limbs and that enormous body with its single gleaming red eye. Involuntarily she squared her shoulders, straightening up to stare it down, not blinking, not looking away.

_I can see you...but you can’t see me. You won’t find me in the dark. You won’t beat me... Whatever it takes…_

“One hundred thousand kilometers,” Ahz said, almost inaudibly. “Fifty thousand. Contact--!”

The Reaper screamed silently overhead, almost close enough to touch if they had been able to reach outside the hull. For a moment all they could see was their own darkness and that imperious glowing eye ready to consume them...and then it was past. It was gone. They were alive.

“They didn’t see us,” Ahz whispered. He sagged back in his seat, a shaky laugh escaping him. “They didn’t see us. Did you see that?! They went right by and they didn’t --”

“Yes,” Aria said crisply. Relief was coursing through her, mixed with a terrifying new respect for how immense their enemy was, but she wouldn’t -- couldn’t -- allow herself to show that weakness here. “Well done, Ahz. Wait till they’ve retreated to Thessia and then bring us around. When we get back, you know your orders. Omega disappears the same way. They will not _fucking_ have us.”

*****

The news filtered in slowly, piece by horrifying piece. Earth was lost. Shepard was gone, probably dead; they’d found her dog tags in the London mud but nothing else. The Crucible was useless and without it the dregs of the Milky Way resistance fell apart, flattened by the Reaper juggernaut. Some, like Jarral and the remnants of Aria’s fleet, managed to escape the carnage, but far more had been left as floating wrecks in orbit of the human homeworld, bloodied bodies on its streets, or simply absorbed into the ever-growing mass of Reaper forces.

Garka sat in Afterlife and sipped morosely at a glass of batarian wine. His eyes trailed from one wall to the other, taking in the expressions on the faces of the civilians there. Things had changed in the few short weeks since that last battle. Omega’s population was always tense, always living on the edge in a tenuous grasp for existence, but there was something almost panicked to that tension now, a feeling of something being wrong and ready to snap.

They were afraid. Hell, Garka was afraid too. He felt as if he were sitting in the center of a shooting gallery with a target painted on his back. No doubt they all did.

He had kept an eye on their population counts, the last few weeks. He’d half-expected to hear of suicides, of people giving in to despair. Interestingly enough, the civilians seemed to cling on ever more tightly with each passing day. There was no escaping that abject certainty that the Reapers would come for them eventually...but it was as if somehow they had all come to the collective decision that they would stay, drink, brawl, continue existing with spiteful determination until they day they could no longer do it.

It was an admirable outlook in some ways, and Garka had only to glance up in the direction of the balcony that overlooked the nightclub to consider where it came from. _We learn from the ones who raise us,_ he thought ruefully. _For better or for worse._

As if following his thoughts, his omnitool whined with the receipt of an incoming message. It was from Aria, a bulk message to her entire guard corps, terse and direct as her orders generally were.

_Report to ACC immediately. I’ll be making a stationwide announcement shortly._

His lips pursed and he stared at the message in silence for a moment or two. Aria’s stationwide announcements were generally more propaganda than policy, not something her staff needed to be involved in. He couldn’t think of any possible reason she would need him or the others present…

...unless her plan was ready.

He swallowed, all four eyes closing and then opening again sharply. Now was not the time to get creative with his interpretation of Aria’s instructions, not with things as tense and uncertain as they were. But his stomach knotted with certainty that this blunt lockdown would bring nothing but trouble. Unsteadily he lifted a hand, tapped at the omnitool messaging controls.

_When the news goes out, I should be with my family._

He hit ‘send,’ waited. A long, tense few moments passed, followed by the buzz of a reply.

_When I tell you to come, you come._

He closed his omnitool, stood up and left the nightclub.

Marin was dozing in one of the chairs in their small living room when he returned. The reinforced jacket she wore for trading work was still half-draped over one arm. He looked at her a while, watching the way her head slumped sideways with sheer exhaustion, the way her lips curled with some dream kinder than reality.

But he woke her anyway. “Marin --” He shook her shoulder, nudging her slowly back to consciousness.

She blinked and stared up at him drowsily. “Hmm? There you are. I --”

“Are the boys here?”

“Asleep.” She glanced towards the bedroom, then back to him, registering his agitation. “What is it, _kut_?”

He shook his head. “I don’t know,” he lied, not wanting to be the one to explain. “But something’s about to happen.”

She frowned, sat up with the shift to instant alertness learned by necessity on Omega. “Was there an attack?”

“No. Aria’s about to make an announcement.” He went to the window that looked out on the corridor beyond, then shut it with a _thunk_. Behind him, he heard her go to the apartment’s video screen and tap it on. A low electronic whine filled the room and he turned in time to see Aria’s face appear.

 _She’s aged,_ he thought distantly. Of course, she had been nearly a thousand years old as long as he had known her, but something had changed in the last few weeks. Most people would not have recognized it as anything other than her usual intensity; it certainly resembled the expression she got when something had fired her up in anger. But Garka had known her a long time. He could once again see that tension, sense that something was different…

And then it struck him, and he knew why he had never seen her like this before.

Aria T’Loak was afraid.

“ _People of Omega._ ” Her voice thundered out, dulled a little by the tinny speakers on either side of the vidscreen. “ _Hear me. You know what has happened to the rest of the galaxy. You know the Reapers won on Palaven, on Sur’Kesh, on Thessia, on Earth. You know they don’t intend to stop until they have wiped us out._ ”

Her eyes closed briefly, then opened again, as if staring into the heart of every person watching her. “ _But I made a promise to you when I returned. I promised that we would make this station impenetrable, that Omega would not be taken from us again. And I will keep that promise -- whatever the cost._ ”

Garka’s head turned slightly. His gaze found Marin’s and they looked at each other. He saw her throat spasm as she swallowed.

“ _Beginning today, this station is under lockdown. The docks are closed. All external communications are forbidden. Any space adjacent to the external hull has been evacuated. Power usage will be strictly controlled. Food and water rationing will begin immediately._ ”

She paused, as if to let this sink in. “ _This will be hard. We all know that. But the alternative is falling. And Omega doesn’t fall. We -- will -- survive._ ”

The video screen clicked off. Garka opened his mouth, then closed it again without saying anything.

In the silence, he could hear the sound of shouting in the streets outside, and then gunfire.

_To be continued..._


End file.
